Hi, I’m Susan DiFabio and I’m an independent Agile coach. I’m passionate about integrity, sustainable pace, customer collaboration, and feedback as foundations for work environments that enable people to build great software.

In a sense, I’ve come full circle in my career. I started as a classroom teacher but for a variety of reasons switched to working with computers. I learned to write code in an on-the-job training program and over the years have held all types of roles on software project teams. About 3 years ago I switched to coaching and I feel like I’m back home again in a teaching role. Many times I have reflected on how my teacher training has been useful to me, even when I was a programmer.

I spent most of my career as a consultant working on software development projects in manufacturing, budgeting, and insurance. I was privileged to have great clients and even had 2 engagements that lasted 7 years each. Neither one was officially Agile, but in both cases they ended up being organically Agile in that we worked directly with the customer in iterations with lots of feedback.

I feel like I’ve always had an Agile mindset. As I watched the industry move more and more toward waterfall and gantt charts, I found myself more and more at odds with project management folks who wanted to lock in a plan that I could only see as fiction. In about 2001 I stumbled across Beck and Fowler’s book “Planning Extreme Programming”. I remember sitting on my patio reading and calling out loud to my husband “Wow! This is everything I know to be true about the way things really work on software projects, but didn’t know how to articulate so that others would understand.”

It took me a while to get to a place where I was able to become more immersed in the Agile community, but I’m here now and I love it. I find Agile to be not only a great way to work, but it attracts great people to work with. I’m looking forward to meeting all of you.

Now for the latest chapter in my story. I’m writing this on Mar 30, a week before the gathering. Yesterday, my knee gave out on me and I am currently on crutches. I won’t know the extent of the damage and whether I will be able to travel or not until next week. I’m still hopeful, but if I don’t get to meet you all at this event I’ll look forward to meeting you at the next one.

All the best,

Susan DiFabio

skdifabio@gmail.com

630-606-0682